


strange is the night where black stars rise

by annejumps



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Eddie Kaspbrak, Adult Richie Tozier, Aphrodisiacs, Bodily Fluids, Double Anal Penetration, Forced Orgasm, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-Consensual Groping, Non-Consensual Touching, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Other, Self-Hatred, Tentacle Monsters, Tentacle Rape, The Tentacles Represent Internalized Homophobia, Trauma, Unwilling Arousal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26200438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annejumps/pseuds/annejumps
Summary: He can hear Eddie’s panicked breathing echoing in the empty space down here. Close, but notthatclose. His stomach drops. There’s a clang and a clatter as Eddie apparently drops his makeshift fencepost weapon as well as his headlamp, then the sounds of him struggling and panting.“Eddie,” Richie shouts again.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Tentacle Monster
Comments: 6
Kudos: 66
Collections: Tentacle Fest





	strange is the night where black stars rise

**Author's Note:**

> Please see the notes at the end for a summary before reading this work if the tags concern you, and please don't read this work if the tags and the warning note make it seem like this isn't your thing. It is definitely not everyone's thing and, while it is not graphically violent, it is not intended to be happy or fun.

_Here there be monsters_.

\--------

They open the “scary” door together, and with the sudden feeling that there’s something running up behind them through the tunnel, something they don’t want to meet, they run through it into the immense dark beyond it. 

The door slams behind them, loud in the silence. At the same time, they both whirl to face it. 

Richie looks around, frantic, shining his flashlight in every direction. 

Yeah, okay. So they’re in the world’s biggest closet. Subtle!

The light is weak enough and the space in here is big enough that the beam doesn’t hit any walls other than the one the door’s in. There’s no other way out that he can see, and just as he starts to run back to the door to try and open it, there’s a strange sound, like escaping steam. It’s unclear what it is or where exactly it’s coming from.

He hears Eddie yell in fright. “Eddie!” he shouts, turning toward the sound, flashlight wavering wildly. Suddenly, something’s wrapping tightly around his ankles and his wrists, pulling him upward. 

Richie pulls against it, tries to kick his legs. It’s not rope—more like vines. But not vines; they’re too muscular, and they’re moving, actively able to prevent _him_ moving. Whatever they are, he’s dully shocked to find he can’t just get free of them. And if _he_ can’t, then Eddie—

He can hear Eddie’s panicked breathing echoing in the empty space down here. Close, but not _that_ close. His stomach drops. There’s a clang and a clatter as Eddie apparently drops his makeshift fencepost weapon as well as his headlamp, then the sounds of him struggling and panting.

“Eddie,” Richie shouts again.

“Richie!” Eddie croaks, panicked. “I’m—” He gasps with the effort he’s trying to exert against whatever the fuck has him—them—bound.

“Just— Eddie, don’t hurt yourself, man, I’ll— I’m gonna try to—” With all his strength, Richie tries again, pulls against the bonds. Whatever’s holding him is most definitely alive, and much stronger than he is. It’s like he’s barely even doing anything. 

_Fuck_. 

Richie at least wants to see what condition Eddie’s in, if he’s injured, at least where he even fucking _is_. 

“Eddie— I can’t— I can’t see you, where are you—” The thing won’t let him wield his flashlight properly, and in the struggle, he drops it. “Shit!”

“Here, Richie, I’m—” comes Eddie’s increasingly higher-pitched, panicked-sounding voice, off to his right. Richie’s not facing that way, at least not enough to see him well. The echoes make it difficult to tell exactly where anything is.

Richie strains, blinking in the low light, trying to see… and then an appendage, a tentacle or whatever it is snakes up his back, up the back of his head, and curls over his forehead, to direct his gaze in the direction of where Eddie is, visible in the glow of their dropped lights. He blinks harder and strains to adjust. At least it hasn’t taken his glasses off. It’s sticky on his skin; the feeling repels him. He’s breathing faster, borderline hyperventilating, and he forces himself to calm down. Or try to.

Blinking, he can see the... _tentacles_ more clearly now, wrapped around their wrists and ankles, shifting and powerful, muscular and tensed. They’re pinkish-brown, segmented, like… worms. But he can’t— He can’t think about them as being trapped by giant _worms_ , not that thinking about them as being ensnared by tentacles is any better, but—

They seem to have come out of cracks in the filthy, damp ground several feet below them; he’s reminded of those giant tube worms that live in the bottom of the deep ocean near hydrothermal vents. A drop from where they are would definitely hurt—

“Richie,” Eddie gasps out, snapping Richie’s gaze to him. Eddie’s bandaged face above a large worm–tentacle wrapped around his upper chest is pale and terrified, his eyes huge. Two others are wrapped around his thighs, one of them snaking up toward his hips. Eddie’s pelvis tilts and his back arches as he attempts in vain to move away from it, to stop its progress.

“Richie—”

“Eddie, Eddie, just— Look at me, it’ll be okay, I’ll—”

 _I’ll what_ , he thinks, looking again at how far below them the floor is now. Quickly, he looks back to Eddie instead.

Eddie keeps struggling, the tentacles winding around him smoothly, bunching up his clothes, revealing the secret skin above his waistband and below his shirt. One slides up under his shirt and must stroke over his nipples, from the way he jumps and gasps. The one around his thigh rubs its end over Eddie’s groin; it takes Richie a moment to realize it’s undoing Eddie’s fly, and then pulling his pants down his hips.

“The fuck—” Reeling, Richie blinks in disbelief. Eddie is straining to look down at himself, mouth frozen open.

The tentacle tugs down Eddie’s underwear, down to his thighs. Richie’s stomach drops. 

“No!” The hoarse shout is out of Richie’s throat and echoing around them before he can stop it. “Eddie!” 

The tentacle pauses, and the tip of it is wagged at Richie, like it’s a forefinger rebuking him. 

“Stop! Let him go!” Richie screams. “Eddie! I’m gonna— I’m gonna, just stay there, man—” _What a fucking ridiculous thing to say_ , part of him thinks coldly, distantly. “Just— I’ll get you—” 

A tentacle glides smoothly up Richie’s neck, whisper-light but slick over his cheek, and slides between his parted lips, continuing on and wrapping around his head like he’s being gagged. _Eddie_ , he tries to yell, but the sound is uselessly muffled. 

He can’t— He shouldn’t watch this, he thinks, and squeezes his eyes shut as he violently tries to turn his head away. But the tentacle in his mouth won’t let him; he can feel it turning his head back to fully face Eddie once more. Almost hyperventilating, he opens his eyes.

He can’t look away from Eddie’s nakedness, his bared hips, his soft cock in its nest of dark hair, the fuzz of hair on his thighs. 

Richie kicks and strains even more than he had before, fighting to get to Eddie. The tentacles around his and Eddie’s wrists and ankles hold firm.

“Richie, Richie,” Eddie pants, panicked and desperate, and Richie can see how hard and fast his ribcage is expanding and contracting in his terror, can hear the hysterical whistles of his breathing. No, maybe Eddie never did actually have asthma, but anybody’d be breathing like that when they’re— when this is happening to them. His eyes are huge and pleading.

The tentacle easing down Eddie’s pants and underwear gets them down to around his knees, then around his ankles. Another one glides up to Eddie’s face, not unlike what one just did to Richie. The one around his chest seemingly slides over his nipples again, and Eddie gasps; another one slides its tapered tip up his chin, over his lower lip, and takes the opportunity to glide easily into his mouth. He chokes and gasps, but he takes it, and then it gets thicker, slides down further. 

Richie tries to scream against the one over his mouth that Eddie can’t breathe, even as he watches Eddie’s nostrils widen and heave with the effort, having no other choice. 

Something is oozing from the tentacle in Eddie’s mouth, something dark and viscous, but glistening in the dim light; although it drips from the entire slick surface around the end there, with the pulsing motion of that particular tentacle it seems the substance is now being pumped into Eddie’s mouth. _Fucked into it_ , Richie thinks. Eddie chokes, but has no choice but to recover and swallow it; Richie watches his throat work as he does. 

Within moments of Eddie’s ingesting it, Richie watches as his lids droop, his mouth goes slack and his cheeks flush. It’s… it’s fucking _done_ something to him, it’s drugged him or something. Richie feels his stomach lurch.

The tentacle takes advantage of Eddie’s loosened jaw to thicken in his mouth, apparently, and Richie gets the impression that it’s thick in the back of his throat, like— Richie can’t help the way his cock throbs at the sudden, acute way he imagines Eddie’s mouth around it like that, although this thing is bigger than a cock. He grimaces, feeling a sharp pang of hatred for himself for thinking of that now.

A worm–tentacle wraps around Eddie’s slowly hardening, reddening cock. 

_Eddie’s cock_.

It’s just the thin, tapered tip of the appendage that’s sliding around it, up and down and tightening around it like a stroking hand; Richie hears him grunt, and can almost feel his own fingers around Eddie, his palm pressed against him, tight and firm and making him feel good. He can _almost_ feel it.

Eddie moans around the tentacle that’s filling his mouth, his eyes falling shut, and Richie’s cock is more difficult to ignore now, slowly hardening inside his boxers and seeking friction Richie wants and doesn’t want and can’t give it when he’s strung up this way, a blurt of precome making the fabric sticky. 

With one tentacle thick in his mouth, another wrapped around his cock, yet another tilts Eddie as the ones binding him turn him slightly, so Richie can see both Eddie’s face, and— and his hole. So that Richie can really get an eyeful as the one tilting him up caresses his ass and in an almost deliberately leisurely way starts to pulse and thicken at the tip, cock-shaped, hovering near his hole. It’s glistening with some sort of substance, something clearish—

The tip of the tentacle nudges teasingly against Eddie’s hole, and Eddie jerks his hips, or tries to; it’s not clear whether he’s trying to move toward it or away from it. It wouldn’t matter, either way.

The thickened tip presses into him. Eddie shouts against the tentacle in his mouth, the sound muffled. 

Richie realizes he’s breathing hard, hot all over; dimly, he thinks he can practically feel what it would be like if it were his cock breaching Eddie. 

He sees Eddie’s cock drip precome onto his belly, sees the tentacle give him a squeeze there like a reward. Richie immediately wants to taste him there; his mouth waters. He can hear Eddie groan as the thickened tentacle works its way further into him, not particularly gentle from the looks of it, slick with glistening ooze, but Eddie’s hips are rocking like he craves it, like he can’t get enough. Richie moans against the tentacle over his mouth. Eddie’s hole is reddened from it already, Richie can see from where it’s stretched around the fat length.

The tentacle starts to work its way in and out of Eddie’s hole, pumping into him mercilessly like a piston; each time it pulls out, right before it plunges back in, it’s at its thickest. Eddie’s whole body rocks with the thrusting, even against the tight hold of the other tentacles. Whatever substance it had drugged Eddie with makes him moan in pleasure at the feeling of being filled by the thing. Richie’s not sure if his being drugged into liking it is making this better or much, much worse, but Richie’s dick doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.

Richie wonders if Eddie’s ever been fucked before, period; the idle, impossible-but-maybe-not thoughts he’d been taunting himself with even just since they’d met again hours ago at the Jade of the Orient, and since he’d remembered Eddie again, the stupid fantasies about maybe being Eddie’s first—something Richie would never ask for—crumble like dust. Okay—this isn’t something Eddie chose, obviously, but who’d want anything remotely like this again? 

And why the fuck is Richie feeling sorry for himself right now? What kind of a prick—

 _Jesus fuck_ , he thinks suddenly, _Eddie doesn’t deserve this. It should be me. ...Why isn’t it me?_

Eddie’s skin is pink all over; his eyes are heavy-lidded; he’s arching, moaning with drugged ecstasy low in his throat against the tentacle still stuffed in his mouth. Eddie’s a small-framed man even if he is of average height, and he looks small and almost delicate in the grips of the thing, the tentacles seeming impossibly big where they’re plunged into him, where they’re making him take them.

And Richie realizes he can _hear_ it all, the rhythmic wet squelching as Eddie is plundered, the tiny grunts Eddie can’t help making, that he might be too far beyond even knowing he’s making. 

Fuck, Richie’s sure it’s not anatomically possible but for a fleeting moment he almost thinks he’s able to see Eddie’s belly on his small frame bulging with the bulk of the tentacle, like it’s that thick and deep inside him. 

Just as he’s thinking that, another, smaller tentacle glides up alongside the first one and smoothly fucks into Eddie in counterpoint with the first one, as Eddie chokes out a moan.

With a leaden stomach Richie realizes it’s not that he can’t look away—it’s that he doesn’t _want_ to. He can’t resist fucking _looking_ , like he’s going to memorize every groan and twitch of an unwilling, half-dressed, drugged Eddie writhing as he’s used by some inhuman being— _Fuck_.

Richie’s harder than he can ever remember being; his cock is throbbing, practically begging now for some sort of friction. He groans helplessly against the tentacle over his mouth, trying to tilt his hips to get some sort of movement against the fabric of his underwear, distantly aware of how wet his lashes are.

He feels a thick tentacle under him then, almost like he’s sitting on it; it’s sizable, and it rocks his hips forward. A groan is punched out of him; he realizes it’s bouncing his hips, in an obscene parody of what it would be like if—

Eddie’s eyes roll back in his head, his lashes fluttering as he arches his body. “Richie. Fuck me,” Eddie groans. 

The world stops. 

_He’s drugged_ , Richie reminds himself feverishly. _He’s delirious. He doesn’t mean it. Pennywise is making him say that. He said “Richie. Fuck me,” not “Richie, fuck me.” “Fuck me” is a thing people say when shit happens. He’s not thinking about you fucking him, you jackass. Stop thinking about it_.

The tentacles pull Eddie’s knees further apart. They’re opening Eddie to his view, giving him a good show of the two thick tentacles fucking into him and stretching him obscenely, fucking him where Richie’s not fucking him and never will, making him watch while Richie can’t even touch him. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. The tentacle supporting Richie is still rocking him, in time with the ones fucking Eddie, in a grotesque fucking by proxy, a grim, sick parody of what Richie wants with his entire heart and soul— Fuck, he wants him so bad—

Richie feels his balls start to tighten in warning, and that almost shocks him back to the reality of what he’s doing. _No, no, fuck_ —he’s not sure if he tries to say the words or just thinks them; he desperately thinks in an effort at some self-control that he can’t, he _must not_ come while he watches his best friend and the only person he’s ever truly loved get fucked against his will in the ass and mouth by thick fat wormy glossy _monster tentacles_. 

_I can’t, I can’t, I can’t_ , he chants to himself, even as he knows what he’s looking at is reaching some deep, hitherto unknown part of his hindbrain and rubbing it like it’s a prostate, and instead of moving away he’s choosing to lean into the touch, hips rocking with it whether he wants to or not. 

He _can’t_ fucking come like this, eyes glued to Eddie as he rocks and whimpers, tears squeezing out from the corners of his eyes in his reddened face as he’s fucked. 

The tentacle around Eddie’s cock starts stroking it ruthlessly until he comes, crying out against the thick tentacle filling his mouth. Richie watches, watches Eddie’s dick jerk and the come spurt out of it onto the dark fuzz of his abdomen. He seems to come hard, and a lot, and he’s shuddering. God, what Richie wouldn’t give to—

And then the— _thing_ seems to come too, shoving its thickened appendages deeper inside his ass than before and holding them there, thrusting in little abortive movements as God knows what is fucked deep into him, the one in his mouth making him gag. The worm-tentacle under Richie’s hips mimics every movement. 

Eddie strains anew and struggles against the tentacles around his wrists and ankles, but of course it does nothing because he’s weakened, trembling with unwilling pleasure. Something viscous and pale oozes out of his hole as the tentacle-worms squirm inside him. 

The tentacle under Richie forces him to mime the thrusts; the friction of his cock on the cotton of his boxers is difficult to resist.

 _I can’t fucking come like this_ , Richie thinks in one last-ditch effort to stop himself, _I can’t get off to this_ , and then of course he comes—hard—as he knew he would. 

Eddie’s hazy eyes are now locked with his, and for a moment they clear, they widen and his eyebrows raise like he must realize what just happened, what Richie just did. Richie gasps out a sob.

The tentacles in Eddie’s mouth and ass slow down in their movements, becoming thinner, sliding out of him, the one around his cock sliding off him; he moans softly, brokenly as they seem to relinquish him. He blinks, slow, his brow furrowed; his breathing is raspy, and his hair is even mussed, his clothes wrinkled. He’s flushed and sweaty, in addition to being covered in whatever muck they’ve encountered down here. And then there’s whatever the fuck he’s been filled with….

Eddie would not want to be seen like this, and here’s Richie staring at him like he can’t stop, like he’s memorizing it. Eddie’s hole is loosened and swollen and red and dripping with whatever the tentacles fucked into him, his lips pink and his mouth abused-looking. Richie finds himself thinking of how beautifully debauched Eddie looks. 

_Ruined_.

Yeah, _ruined_ is right. Everything’s ruined, and Richie can’t shake the feeling that he’s to blame.

“Richie,” Eddie croaks, and his voice sounds wrecked from the thing fucking his throat. With a stab of guilt, Richie closes his eyes tightly for a moment as he lets himself imagine Eddie sounding like that for him, after sucking his cock, wrapped up with him in some warm dry bed somewhere—something that probably won’t happen now, if it ever could even have been possible to begin with.

Richie groans. He’s flushed and sweating with hot shame, boxers sticky with come as he blinks at Eddie. The glassiness is leaving Eddie’s big brown eyes as the drug seems to wear off, and his face looks drawn now. 

Maybe it's a trick of the light, but for a moment Richie sees the black sludge the tentacle fucked into Eddie’s mouth running thick down his chin; it tugs at a memory he doesn't want to fully recall. He blinks again and there’s just a smudge around Eddie’s lips.

“Richie. It’s okay,” Eddie rasps, and Richie’s shame, impossibly, deepens. To think that Eddie’s trying to comfort _him_.

The tentacle slides from over his mouth. “No, it’s not,” he says back, immediately, voice scratchy. He inhales, realizing muzzily that that was the wrong thing to say. “Eddie,” he starts again, “are you okay?” He winces; that wasn’t the right thing to say either. Maybe there is no right thing to say. He should be glad he at least hasn’t made a joke about very unsafe sex, or getting consent.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“I’m….” Eddie starts. “I don’t know,” he says finally. He shivers a little, like the intensity is leaving him in shock, like his body is cooling down as he catches his breath. He closes his eyes, his pants and underwear still around his ankles, pool of come drying on his belly over his softening cock.

The tentacle–worms seem to loosen their hold a little, on both of them, and then they’re lowered slowly to the filthy floor. With shaking hands, crouching on the ground and barely coordinated, Eddie clumsily pulls his pants and underwear up past his knees. There’s something so pitiful about the gesture that Richie’s heart aches.

There’s a slithering sound. Richie freezes, staring at Eddie. At the same time, they look up to see the worm–tentacles shrinking slowly, slowly away. Can they—

“Run!” Richie shouts on a burst of adrenaline, scrambling for his flashlight and then stumbling to his feet. Their only shot is the door they came through—

Eddie, wincing, clumsily pulls up his underwear and his pants with one trembling hand, lunges for his headlamp and fencepost with the other. Richie grabs him by the front of his shirt and launches into a run, yanking Eddie along with him. 

As they run toward the door, it swings open on loud, creaking hinges, and behind them he thinks he can hear the slithering sounds of the worm-things snaking after them. His heartbeat ratchets up in terror. He can’t afford to assume he’s imagining it.

Richie heaves Eddie through the doorway first, pushes him to the floor of the tunnel well clear, and turns to slam the door shut, for whatever good it’ll do. From behind the door: silence. The frame doesn’t even shake. Maybe whatever that was can’t extend beyond the door.

Eddie’s on his hands and knees on the floor of the tunnel, breathing hard, his face angled away from Richie. He doesn’t stand up again yet. 

He’s got to have that load of… _monster come_ inside him still, and Richie finds room to hate himself a little bit more for the interested twitch his now-soft cock gives at the thought. 

He thinks again that _he_ deserved... that, not Eddie. Never Eddie.

This has to be his fault, right? This was for him. Pathetic, weak, disgusting Richie Tozier and his pathetic, disgusting love for Eddie. It wasn’t enough for Richie to pay for it and keep it secret; no, now Eddie has to pay for it too. 

Richie puts his hands on his knees and vomits up a thin stream of acrid bile. He shudders, and makes his way over to Eddie, who glances quickly over at him and then away. Sinking to the floor, he puts a hand lightly on Eddie’s shoulder, and is pathetically grateful when Eddie doesn’t flinch away from his touch.

_Rich, do not fucking touch me!_

“It’s okay,” Richie whispers, in an echo of what Eddie had told him, what he hadn’t believed then either. 

He can feel his hope for building… _something_ , some kind of renewed relationship, with Eddie sliding away from him like sand through his fingers, assuming they’d even survive the night. Eddie won’t want anything to do with him after Richie saw him that way—after he _enjoyed_ seeing him like that. _Got off_ on it. Richie fucking came buckets watching that thing hold Eddie helpless and fuck him at both ends, and Eddie saw it happen, and the come is even now drying uncomfortably in his boxers. 

There’s no coming back from that. 

“I’m sorry,” he adds, voice thick, a sob in his throat. The apology sounds incredibly hollow. He wouldn’t blame Eddie if he never spoke to him again.

“It’s okay, Rich,” Eddie murmurs, shifting toward him, finally looking at him with his big, fathomless eyes dark in the low light. “It wasn’t your fault. You tried to help me.” He turns to face him.

“But I couldn’t,” Richie’s arms slide around Eddie, tentative at first, but the urge to hold him, to offer some sort of comfort, is too strong, even if he has no business now. He can’t _not_ touch Eddie. He’s always been weak that way.

“Not your fault,” Eddie says again, shifting toward him, and then going limp against him with exhaustion. Richie can’t help wrapping him up tighter in his arms. “I’m….” He swallows. “I’m sorry you had to see me that way.” He sounds utterly broken. Normally, Eddie would be freaking out over… well, over that, but he’s not yelling, he’s not gesturing, and a coldness settles into Richie’s stomach. “I didn’t…. I didn’t want to… _like_ that.” He shudders, and Richie tightens his hold briefly. “But I did.”

“Not your fault, Eds,” Richie says against his temple, voice shaking a little with his vehemence. Eddie must know, he has to know he wasn’t to blame. “It did something to you, man, it… drugged you.”

“I… I know,” Eddie says in a small voice. “I… I could feel it when it kicked in, everything felt so fucking good, but I—” Cutting himself off suddenly, shaking his head as if to clear it, he swallows.

“What, what is it?” Richie shifts back to look at him.

Eddie says in a whisper, “Pennywise was…. Pennywise was in my head, talking to me, while it. While it happened.” He’s looking down.

Richie inhales sharply. “Fucking what?” _He wasn’t in_ my _head_ , Richie thinks. _Pennywise knows my own thoughts are fucking bad enough_.

“He…. Rich, I can’t,” Eddie says, low and frantic, still not looking at him.

“Eddie, I— You can say it, you can tell me what he said.”

“He said— He said— He said shit like, ‘Look at you, you're disgusting, you like being touched like this, you like how it feels.’” Eddie shudders. He doesn’t try to imitate Pennywise’s voice, but Richie can all too easily imagine his sneering and taunting. “And… Rich. He was right.”

 _Richie. Fuck me_. 

Does Eddie even know he said that? Did Richie hallucinate it? Richie’s not going to fucking ask. 

“You were drugged, man,” Richie says, weakly. He’s aware they need to get the fuck out of here, but it’s like he can’t move.

Eddie shakes his head, eyes wide. He looks haunted. “I mean, yeah, I was, but that was just to make me… not resist it so much. He was right.” He looks up at Richie then, meaningfully. Richie swallows hard. “It wanted to make me feel good, it was…. It knew I wanted—”

“Not— Not that, Eddie. You didn’t _want that_ —”

“I mean, yeah, no, not _that_ , but— He knew what I would like, Richie. He knew. I’ve never told anyone, but he knew. He knew what I wanted and why it scared me.”

The thing caressing him, wrapping around him, fucking into him— The thought of Eddie wanting to be touched that way, Richie wanting to touch him like that— 

Eddie continues, voice almost a whisper, half like he’s recounting it to himself. “And he said: ‘And now Richie knows and he thinks you're disgusting, you’re filthy and dirty like you were always afraid you’d be, and now you’re filled with—’” His voice cracks, and with a stab of dismay Richie thinks he’s about to start crying, and that—that will end Richie.

“Eds,” Richie says quickly, frantic, and Eddie stops. Richie closes his eyes tightly. He can’t— He doesn’t know how to tell Eddie that the idea that he was disgusting and dirty was the furthest thing from his mind just now, and it doesn’t seem like it would be a great idea to go there, to fucking put it mildly. Did Eddie not see him come in his pants watching him? And Eddie’s afraid Richie thinks _he’s_ disgusting? “Eds. He’s… full of shit like always. Don’t fucking listen to him.” The words feel weak—they both know Pennywise feeds on real fears. 

They’re both quiet for a few moments, but Richie doesn’t move away from Eddie and apparently that confirms something for him; he can feel it when Eddie calms somewhat. 

“Did it… drug you, too?” Eddie asks then.

Richie inhales and waits what he thinks might be a beat too long to say, “Yeah.” He swallows against the dryness in his mouth. “Eds, I’m sorry,” he says again. _For everything_.

Eddie nods. He seems to believe Richie’s telling the truth, that he wasn’t drugged, which makes Richie feel even shittier, since that’s apparently somehow possible. But he can’t— It would hurt Eddie to know that Richie just couldn’t stop watching. What Eddie doesn’t need right now is more hurt. 

Just more things to know and hate about himself. Add them to the pile. Richie closes his eyes for a moment. 

Jesus, he’s the disgusting, dirty one. The pervert. Not Eddie. It happening to Eddie and not him makes a horrifying kind of sense. A lot of the stuff It did made—makes—a horrifying kind of sense.

 _A sacrifice? I nominate Eddie_.

“Richie,” Eddie says, quiet, and Richie startles, yanked from his thoughts. “We gotta leave.”

He’s right, of course. Richie doesn’t know how Eddie has the wherewithal to make a common-sense, lucid suggestion right now, considering he was just _gang-raped by giant worms_. It’s shock, Richie decides. 

They’re going to have to go find the others now—they have to kill this fucking clown, after all—and Richie’s never going to breathe a word of any of this to them. He can already feel his mind busy working to try and forget that it even happened so he won’t have to think about it himself. 

_Suppressed memory powers, activate!_

But it would be just his fucking luck if he’s unable to forget this. Plus, you have to leave Derry for your memories to fade, and, well, that might not be in the cards. 

Anyway, maybe he doesn’t deserve to be able to forget it.

Fuck. He can’t believe the too-calm way he’s thinking right now, but he knows that right under the surface he’s reeling in horror at himself. But if they don’t leave here now, he has a feeling he’s going to drop to the ground and be unable to think about anything except what just happened, until he consumes himself somehow from the guilt. 

Until he dies down here. 

Eddie’s going, though, and he needs to follow Eddie. He’s pathetically, horrifyingly grateful to have a reason to fucking go.

“Yeah, come on. Let’s get out of here,” he says to Eddie, picking up his flashlight again and moving to stand, holding out a hand to him in preparation of pulling him up and supporting him.

Eddie, bending over himself, does up his fly; once Richie realizes what he’s doing, he quickly looks away for a moment, face burning. Eddie doesn’t want him to see, and he can’t really blame him. 

_God, why couldn’t it have been me_ , he thinks again, dully.

Eddie then picks up his headlamp and his weapon in one hand, and looks up at him, not moving yet for a moment as Richie’s breath stills in his throat, afraid Eddie will turn away from him and leave without waiting for him. God, everything about Richie still hinges on Eddie; that hasn’t changed. Richie still loves him a truly devastating amount. 

Then Eddie takes Richie’s hand firmly in his own, keeping the eye contact and letting himself be pulled to his feet, unsteady as he is. He doesn’t release Richie’s hand right away, and Richie has to remind himself to take a breath. Eddie nods, somber and determined, seemingly unaware of Richie’s inner freakout just now.

“Let’s go,” Eddie says. There’s still trust in his eyes, and that more than anything else makes Richie’s heart crack apart.

**Author's Note:**

> In sum: in a "what if" that might be kind of a missing scene in canon, behind the "scary" door is a tentacle monster. Non-consensual (rape) tentacle tropes ensue, including Eddie non-consensually receiving a sedative/aphrodisiac, and it's kind of complicated for both Richie and Eddie. Richie and Eddie don't have the time or the emotional wherewithal to deal with any of it. Richie has his own issues to process as he watches what happens to Eddie. In this story, the two of them do not have sex with each other, nor are they able to take much physical comfort in each other, but I like to assume that everyone lives and later they were able to heal from the nonsense I put them through. 
> 
> I did my best to tag as appropriate, but I've been looking at this for so long I'm sure something has evaded me. Any missing appropriate tag was not left out purposefully. 
> 
> Technically the events take place during the day, sure, but it's all a dark night of the soul, maybe, and I enjoyed the title too much to not use it (from _The King in Yellow_ , Robert W. Chambers). Additionally, the appearance of the tentacles owes a lot to the Wiki entry for the sci-fi horror film _Galaxy of Terror_ , in which a character described as having a fear of sex as well as a fear of worms is attacked by a physical manifestation of her fears; the actress described the character as being "frightened by her own sexuality and a desire to submit to something more powerful than herself." Thanks to E, L, and A for helping me out.
> 
> Originally posted anonymously on 8/30.


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